OFFICIALS LEGISLATION INTEREST GROUPS PUBLIC STATEMENTS COMMITTEES VETOES

2023 Species Week

Floor Speech

Date: May 22, 2023
Location: Washington, DC

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Mr. THOMPSON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, the Endangered Species Act was drafted with the best of intentions, but it has simply failed to live up to its noble mission.

Since the ESA was passed in 1973, only 3 percent of species protected by the law have recovered to the point where they can be delisted. This is an abysmal recovery rate.

Burdensome and outdated regulations like the Endangered Species Act negatively impact our Nation's farmers, ranchers, and foresters, create frivolous lawsuits, halt critical infrastructure projects, stifle economic growth, and do not help the species in question. It fails to do that.

Just consider the northern long-eared bat. It is declining due to a disease with no cure, and the ESA will only further restrict our ability to help the species recover. It is an inflexible and outdated approach to species conservation.

America's working lands play a vital role in protecting threatened and endangered species, Mr. Speaker.

Voluntary, locally led conservation programs should be a model for the Federal Government rather than a top-down sledgehammer of red tape, or what I prefer to call, green tape.

It is high past time to modernize the Endangered Species Act to better protect species and to treat property owners, farmers, ranchers, and States as partners rather than obstacles.

The ESA should be amended to empower local stakeholders, incentivize voluntary conservation programs, and should emphasize actually recovering species, not simply leaving them on life support for years to come.

The simple truth is the programs that we have in the Agriculture Committee under a conservation title which are locally led, voluntary conservation programs, have led to the delisting of far more species that were either listed originally as endangered or threatened.

We know that works, and we know the Endangered Species Act in its current form does not.

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Mr. THOMPSON of Pennsylvania. Well, that and the fact I like to eat.

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